


Off the Grid

by adoxyinherear



Category: Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 00:26:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13019394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adoxyinherear/pseuds/adoxyinherear
Summary: "Sam was the only familiar thing in this world."Where my mind wanders every time the credits roll. Unapologetically fluffy.





	Off the Grid

She realized she’d never ridden a light cycle without being the one to steer, to control the throttle, to lean into the bend and feel the response of the bike beneath her. 

And yet, Quorra didn’t have trouble letting go with Sam. She’d sensed the deep calm in him, the same as his father, the instant they’d met. He focused ahead and still she felt that he was with her, the smooth plane of his back, her legs hitched up behind him, anchoring her. Quorra bent her face into the hood of his jacket and inhaled his scent.  
Sam smelled just as he had on the grid, sweat, spice, something she could only describe as organic. How would Jules Verne describe him? But she was not a writer. Not a human.

Except.

The nose she pressed into his hood was flesh-tender to the touch, and when her short hair was blasted back by the wind it cut into her eyes, soft, glossy, vulnerable. Quorra felt the same and not the same.

But Sam, Sam hadn’t changed. He took a sharp turn and she tightened her arms around his waist, earning a brief grin thrown over his shoulder.

Sam was the only familiar thing in this world.

“I want to show you something,” he’d said.

Why did Quorra feel like she had to close her eyes to see it?

\--

“What’s that?”

She hesitated just inside the boxy entrance of Sam’s home as a small, furred creature leapt about him madly, tongue lolling, emitting a sharp-edged sound she could not describe. Like a stubborn motor, it whined and stuttered.

Sam knelt, allowing the wild thing to lick his face all over, to put two of its four short legs – arms? Something else? – on his chest. He looked up at her, eyes dancing with amusement.

“This is Marv,” he explained. “My dog.”

Quorra’s eyes lit with recognition, not of the creature, but the name.

“Your rescue.”

Sam grinned.

“Yeah, that’s Marv,” he turned his attention back to the dog, scratching him under the chin, behind his minute, perky ears. “You want to say hello, buddy? She won’t bite.”

Quorra barked out a laugh at that, crouching beside Sam, cocking her head to study the creature. 

“Can he speak?”

“No, but he’s smarter than he looks. Probably understands more than half of what you tell him.”

Quorra bent lower, until her face was close enough to Marv’s that she could see how different his eyes were from her own, from Flynn’s, from Sam’s. Before she could think of something to say, the dog’s tongue darted out, smearing wetly from her lip to nose. She laughed again, spitting involuntarily. Sam was laughing, too. He hooked a hand under her elbow, helping her up while she wiped at her face with her sleeve. 

“That means he likes you,” Sam insisted. Quorra’s brow furrowed.

“Does he expect me to lick him back?”  
Shaking his head, chuckling now, Sam invited Quorra with a gesture to walk further into the large, rectangular room that she supposed was his primary living space. He opened a tall box, illuminating the contents briefly before closing it again and handing her a metal cylinder. She turned it over in her hands, curious.

“Here, let me help,” Sam said, stepping closer and righting it in her hands, one of his folded around hers to hold it steady while the other pried at a tab on the top. There was a snap and foam bubbled forth from an oval opening, cascading over both of their fingers. Sam was quick to shake his off, but Quorra raised her own to inspect them before she popped one in her mouth, sucking the bubbles off. They fizzed bitterly in her mouth, but it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant taste. She recognized it for what it was, even if it wasn’t what she was used to on the grid.

“Alcohol.”

Sam nodded.

“Beer, actually. And not a very good one.”

“I like it.”

She raised it to her lips, sipping it, observing Sam over the curved rim. He was still close, near enough that she could see the muscles in his throat working when he swallowed. He was watching her, too, an intensity about his eyes that charged through her.

“I’m sorry about your father,” she said softly, suddenly, thinking of the bridge, how she’d felt the tension in his body as she edged him toward the portal. How she’d had to fight her own urge to turn back, to save Flynn.

He looked away, and it was a long moment before he spoke. Quorra didn’t drink her beer for fear of slurping it in the silence that grew between them.

“Was he going to come back? Was that ever part of his plan?”

Sam’s voice was husky, hurt. Quorra reached out, fingers lighting on his forearm. Touching him here wasn’t the same as holding on to him when they were on the bike – she didn’t need to, only wanted to.

“Yes.” Her whisper was fierce, and she had to make an effort to raise her voice when she continued. “But I think he knew Clu wouldn’t just let him go. He felt responsible for him.”

“But not for me?”

“Sam, the stories he told about you – he loved you. He wanted to come back but he, he did what he did because, because,” Quorra floundered, for once at a loss for words. She felt guilty because she’d had so much more time with Flynn than his own son had had, that he’d made her his accomplice in disappointing Sam one last time.

“He was protecting me,” Sam finished for her, resignation warring with frustration in his voice. She’d heard the same thing in Flynn’s when he talked about his stand-off with Clu, when he’d first decided that the only way he could win was not to play. It wasn’t the man he’d been, but rather, the one he’d aspired to be.

What kind of man did Sam aspire to be?

“Yes,” Quorra offered lamely, retracting her hand from Sam’s arm. He caught it in the air, giving her fingers a squeeze and meeting her eyes again.

“So, he told stories about me?”

Quorra smiled.

“I remember all of them.”

\--

She’d lived for so long with Flynn in the silent wastes that Quorra had almost forgotten what a city sounded like at night, and even then, the sounds in Sam’s world weren’t the same. He’d insisted Quorra sleep in his bed while he laid out on the couch, but she wasn’t sleeping. She lay flat on her back, listening, allowing the sounds to pass over her, drop into her, tease thoughts from deep within her memory. Flynn had asked her many times what it had been like, in the beginning, when she’d flared into existence with her kind. She’d tried to remember for him, because it had seemed so important to him that he knew, but the truth was that in one instant she hadn’t been, and then in the next she was.  
Probably birth was the same, Quorra thought. 

Time didn’t feel the same here, either, the minutes more potent, urgent, varied. Sam owned only one timekeeping device, and when she’d asked about it, he’d said it was an antique – a clock radio he’d had in his bedroom as a child. Quorra stretched out an arm, fingers alighting on the glowing red numbers. They were many numerals higher than they’d been when she’d bid Sam goodnight.

Quorra rose from the bed, padded softly beyond the screen that separated the sleeping area from where Sam slept on the couch. She stood at his feet, admiring the way the yellow light from the lamps outside illuminated his nose, the full pout of his lips. The shadows on his face were deep, but still warm, like the kind of comfortable darkness you’d find beneath a blanket, or behind your eyes when you closed them, ready to dream.

Sam’s popped open, the slight curl of his lips betraying that he hadn’t been sleeping, either.

“Marv wake you up?”

Quorra shook her head. Sam sat up, planting his feet on the floor. One hand fanned out briefly, inviting Quorra to sit down beside him on the couch. She did.

“So we’re going to save the world tomorrow?” Quorra asked, the question buzzing warily on her lips. 

“Without sleep? Maybe.”

“I don’t think I know enough about this world to know how to save it,” Quorra admitted, thinking that the books she’d read hadn’t prepared her for what she’d seen today, on the back of Sam’s motorcycle – that even Flynn would have been surprised by how his world had changed.

“I think you underestimate yourself,” Sam said softly, looking out over the water. Quorra scooted closer, felt the warm press of his shoulder against hers. He tensed momentarily before relaxing. “And you won’t be alone. We’ll work together.”

“We’ll work together,” Quorra repeated. Sam turned, meeting her eyes when she spoke. She’d seen the colors of his world now, could pick out the browns and golds and greens in his eyes that mirrored what she’d seen in the soil, in the trees, so different from the cool, opaque hues on the grid. 

They were close enough to share a breath, just looking at each other. Quorra’s heart pounded with something like fear, like she’d felt when she’d raced away from Flynn and Sam and put herself in a position to be taken by Clu. But then, at least, she’d known what she was afraid of and been determined to do it anyway.

What was it now?

Sam closed the space between them, capturing Quorra’s lips with his own. They were gentle, cooled from the breeze that was coming in over the water, but heating up fast. Quorra’s arms fell from her lap to her sides, mouth opening under the pressure of his lips, tongue slipping experimentally forward. Her heart felt now like it was being squeezed, ready to burst. Sam took one of her hands, his own sliding up her arm as he pulled her closer, finger tips leaving a trail like he were conducting a current. She reached for him, pressing her hands to his muscled belly, his chest, as Sam deepened the kiss. Quorra felt his breath against her cheek, a sharp exhale through his nose before he broke from her lips to claim her jaw, her throat, the shoulder exposed by the too-large t-shirt he’d given her to sleep in. When he nipped at her breast through the thin cotton, she gasped. There was an answering grumble of satisfaction from somewhere deep in his chest, and Quorra arched her back almost without meaning to, giving him greater access. One of his hands slid up her stomach under the shirt, pushing it up and with a tug over her head, off. He took one swollen nipple into his mouth, as sweet and persistent as he’d been with her lips. Quorra moaned. She hadn’t had sex since before the purge, and then it had been about discovery, innocent delight, exploring her own sexuality and that of her ISO partners. 

This felt different.

Was it because Sam was a user? What was she now? Their bodies radiated heat in the same way, there were contours to her flesh that felt as his did. She wanted to know if it would feel the same, to feel a change inside as well as out.

Sam didn’t reach for her undergarments, not until she moved his hands, met his eyes. She could see the question there, knew that the answer he hoped for was the one she wanted to give. 

Still, Sam surprised her by pausing in the hollow between her breasts, planting a kiss there, trailing back up toward her jaw, her ear. “I’m guessing there weren’t any romance novels in that collection,” he teased, giving them both permission in the moment to think of where they’d come from, what they’d been through. Quorra laughed, because he was right, because it was a relief, and because it tickled.

“I’m relying on instinct,” she replied, working at the waistband of the shorts he wore, surprised when there was only warm, taut flesh beneath her fingers. His own undergarments were apparently less restrictive than her own, and he didn’t sleep in anything else. 

Quorra trailed a finger along his hip, low, delighted in the soft hairs that sprouted below his belly button. It was Sam’s turn to laugh.

“That tickles.”

“What about this?”

She took his length in her hand, one finger curling forward, combing through the coarser hairs that grew here. She felt his breath catch, but he didn’t answer, kissing her again instead. There was an edge to this kiss that hadn’t been in earlier ones, and she felt herself dragged willingly along it as she began to stroke him, finding a rhythm. Quorra leaned forward, breaking the kiss, breath soft against his ear.

“I read _Lady Chatterley’s Lover_ ,” she admitted in a whisper, giving him an experimental squeeze. 

“I haven’t,” Sam replied sharply, breathing labored. He wrapped his arms around her waist now, meeting her eyes, mirroring the world in hers. “Come here.”

She did.


End file.
